


Black and Blue, Karl/Chris, RPF, PG-13

by blcwriter



Category: Star Trek RPF
Genre: Angst, LiveJournal, M/M, fic import
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-15
Updated: 2013-12-15
Packaged: 2018-01-04 18:10:06
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,244
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1084103
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/blcwriter/pseuds/blcwriter





	Black and Blue, Karl/Chris, RPF, PG-13

Comment fic for [today's Daily Captain and Doctor](http://community.livejournal.com/jim_and_bones/211680.html#cutid1) at [](http://jim-and-bones.livejournal.com/profile)[**jim_and_bones**](http://jim-and-bones.livejournal.com/) -- pictures and entries for this feature are members locked.  The picture of Chris as a baby mafioso was too much to pass up.  Angsty, angsty, angsty.

\--

Whatever he’d expected when the kid had texted him to say he’d meet Karl for dinner when he got in from the airport, it wasn’t _this_.

Solid black shirt, black jacket, French cuffs and small silver cufflinks—hair practically shorn, two or three days’ worth of beard growth, face and eyes puffy and scruffy and tired. He still looked—gorgeous, edible—wolfish, somehow, eyes burning bright in his face, feverish almost. He sat at the bar, fingers tracing the lines of a tumbler full of something clear and on ice, staring at the bottles over the bar and for once, not reading something or writing whatever it was that he wrote in one of his dozens of notebooks.

“Mate,” Karl said, and Chris’ head turned, a quirk of his mouth, not quite a smile, acknowledging him.

“Hey,” he said, sliding off of his stool and slipping a bill onto the bar as he gave a nod to the girl polishing glasses. Long, loose black pants shook out over shiny black shoes—Italian, if Karl had to judge, not Chris’ usual style. The host sat them without a word in the back—a booth out of the way, no mirrors to give off their reflections to the rest of the room. Karl’d make sure to give her an extra big tip on the way out.

“What’s with the baby Mafioso getup?” Karl asked, as the waitress came over and slid menus onto the table. He gave his usual drink order as Chris just sipped at—whatever his drink was, not his usual scotch.

Chris looked down at himself as if he’d forgotten what he was wearing. “Oh—friend of mine. Student film. Helping him out. Didn’t have time to change after the shoot, not and make it on time.”

“Those shoes aren’t student budget,” Karl noted, taking his gin and tonic with a smile and a nod for the waitress.

Chris shrugged and rubbed at his forehead. “Nah. I told him if it got picked up or got him a deal he could reimburse me for costume expenses and pay me at scale.”

Karl took a closer look at Chris’ face—he didn’t look tired, he looked fucking exhausted—his skin was pasty, gritty with more than a day’s worth of filming and work. “Costume expenses. Yours the only costume you’re bankrolling?”

Chris shrugged again, then raised the glass to his lips, sipping slowly before licking his lips. The French cuff slid upward slightly, his pale wrist and long fingers more defined and pale in contrast to the suit, that and the dim restaurant light. The waitress came back before Karl could press further.

After they’d given their orders, Chris asked about the movie Karl had just wrapped, and Karl let him change the subject-- for now. Chris chuckled drily over the shenanigans some of his co-stars had gotten up to, made all the appropriate comments, even gave a half-grin or two when Karl recalled with fondness some of his favorite moments. And yet—it seemed like he was doing it more to go through the motions than anything else.

“I’ll look forward to seeing it, then,” Chris finally said, his voice raspy and tired.

Karl was about to bring the subject around to whatever it was that had been running Chris so fucking ragged when their plates arrived—but Chris dove in like a man who hadn’t seen water just coming out of the desert, so Karl held his tongue and worked on his dinner. He hadn’t eaten the slime and salt that passed for food on the plane, preferring—looking forward, hell, _yearning_ , if he was going to put a word on it—instead to the idea of his first meal back in town being with Chris. Chris, who he hadn’t seen in so long.

When at last they’d both finished, Chris waved the waitress over to ask for the check, much to Karl’s shock.

“Sorry,” he said, looking back up at Karl. “I’ve got to get back, we’ve got a night shot to do and they can only film around me so long.”

“You could do with a week’s sleep, it looks like,” Karl said, and if he sounded angry, well, it was only on Chris’ behalf.

Chris puffed out a laugh that seemed—disbelieving. “Always the dad, Karl.” He put his hands up on the table, steepled them in front of this mouth, and stared at him for a long, uncomfortable moment, his expression intense and something Karl couldn’t decipher.

It made Karl squirm in his seat until he finally blurted—“Look. I thought a lot while I was away, and I’m sorry I left the way that I did, but I just needed to think.”

Chris nodded, moved his hands just enough to say—“I know that’s how you felt.” His expression was still calm and unknown—it made for a strange sense of dislocation from the Chris he thought he’d encounter, this stranger facing him over the table.

The waitress came back with the check and Chris pulled out his wallet, then pulled out enough cash to cover the check and a generous tip.

“So,” ventured Karl. “Can I call you tomorrow—what time does your shoot get done? I could meet you and take you to breakfast.”

Chris shook his head. “No.” His voice was tired but even.

Something clawed its way up into Karl’s chest from his guts, cold fear, lumpen as clay—there hadn’t been rumors, but—“Is there someone else?”

Chris snorted, his fingers still steepled in front of his face. His gas-flame eyes and plush, flat-lined mouth held no amusement. “No. Does there have to be? Can’t I just have thought a lot, too?”

Karl’s mouth was dry as he said—“But … we can make this thing work.”

Chris shook his head. “No. Let’s leave it here and maybe by the next movie we can pretend like this never happened. We’re actors, after all. Professionals, if nothing else.” He stood, seemingly immune to the fact that his words cut like a garotte. He swallowed what was left of his drink in one polished motion, and put the glass precisely back in the wet circle it had made on the table, his hand totally steady. Perhaps he’d even rehearsed this little speech.

Karl heard his voice—weak, feeble, and Christ, he’d never heard himself sound like this even during the worst fights of his divorce—asked “When did you get so cold?”

Chris’ mouth twitched, one eye twitching too, his first real sign of emotion all night. His voice rasped before firming again, low so others won’t hear. “Funny. There’s a debate. Are black holes cold because of where they implode when their sun disappears, or are they hot from the friction of all the things they drag in to their gravitational well?”

He rubbed tired, bloodshot eyes, gave Karl, a cracked, broken smile, then walked down the aisle and out the door of the restaurant. In his black suit, he faded away into the night, Karl’s last sight of him the star-like glint of one silver cufflink before it, too, faded away.

\--

I’m an angstwhore, I know. But [U2’s Bad](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RXGJvmCZyHM&feature=related) was on my iTunes. It couldn’t be helped.  



End file.
